THOUGH it happened back in the 1950s the memory is still clear of her father being trailed out of the family home in Pomeroy into the back of a Black Maria, shouting "I'm doing it for you. So you won't have to go through all this."
"That was an awful heavy burden to put on a young child," says Helena Schlindwein (nee McAleer). In the event, her father's activities he had gone on to be jailed for leading an illegal parade - did not "save" her. He died in 1975 as another generation was in the grip of a new round of conflict which may, or may not, be coming to a close.
Helena has just completed a PhD thesis, Alternative Stress Coping Mechanisms in Conflict Situations, at Magee College, Derry. Like others working with the stressed and traumatised of the Northern Ireland conflict, she insists that only now can anyone hope to assess the real emotional damage.
Helena repeated some of what she believes were her father's mistakes. But she also learned. Her view now is that unless there is help for the communities and families most hurt by violence to come to terms with their past, then the politicians are "virtually wasting their time".
"Stress is like a virus. It ripples through the community like an inherited contagion. It has been handed dawn through past generations and unless there is intervention it will came back to haunt future generations. Inevitably it will lead to more community violence."
Helena is in the process of setting up CALMS (Community Action for Locally Managing Stress) in Derry and like many others working with the bereaved and traumatised of the last 25 years, has seen an upsurge in people coming forward to express their pain since the IRA ceasefire - and its abrupt end.
The group is hoping to train those who have suffered themselves in basic group and listening skills so they can help others who are also struggling to express their hurt and pain. Funds are in short supply, with some money coming from the British National Lottery and smaller amounts from various trusts.
Far more could be done with more resources, she says. One of her greatest fears is that the demands on her group will so outstrip supply, that they will be overwhelmed before they are even properly up and running.
"Look at how long it took society to take child abuse and wife beating seriously. They were denied for years. Look at how long it has taken Irish society to come to terms with the shame, fear and hate that came from the Famine.
"Look how it affected Irish culture, the Irish psyche, even something as simple as our attitudes to food. Like the native Americans and the Jews, we have passed on the stresses and failures of the past down to the present day.
"We need our stress taken seriously. We are not mentally ill. Our feeling can only be in the hands of people who need the same themselves. Health care professionals may be skilled but people will simply not go to them. We are not sick we are normal people who have lived totally abnormal lives over the past 25 years.
"Our lives, our experiences, our truth must be validated. We must re examine them, without the "valium sandwich" or the "10 pints a night/bottle of vodka" approach. Only then can we hope to rebuild for the future." Many of those who used the chemical dependency route over the years ended up with addictions which only made their troubles far worse.
IN the nationalist community, she says, there is barely a family which has not lost a member to death or imprisonment. Hardly anyone who has not seen a neighbour dragged from their house or on trial or interned or exiled.
In the Protestant community, there are thousands of women who have learned to sleep nightly with a revolver under the pillow. And to wake each morning to the prospect of sudden death by bomb or shooting.
Many Protestant women's lives have been determined by their husband's profession, where they live, where their children go to school, who their friends are. No community has a monopoly on suffering.
"Both sides have their blind spots, their closed doors; both sides deny the suffering of the other side. That stress must be taken seriously; those fears must be admitted. If they are not there, people will not be receptive to change. It will be the two tribe warring with each other over and over again.
"Children respond differently, depending on how they are taught within the family to handle stress. In ghetto areas, like west Belfast and the Bogside, you had many adults who were functioning themselves far beyond what could normally be expected of them.
"So, you have degrees of coping, and what is needed are strategies for helping people with low capacity for dealing with the high demand that stress puts on them. People can be taught, even if they failed to learn when they were children.
"It takes time to assess your own skills and find out how to acquire more. I'm about skills building around stress coping, so that people can better manage their own stress without drugs.
"In my view this should be far higher up the political agenda. The end of the IRA ceasefire, brought this home to me. I was in Derry city centre and I met people who started crying with me on the street because they know I'm interested in this area.
"They know I am taking it seriously so they let their emotions go for a moment or two. The stress was very evident that week. People were speechless, they were numb, they thought there was a mistake and an old newsreel had been played on the television.
"They were in complete denial. This could not have happened. How were we going to cope? You could see hidden emotions surfacing to the eyes, to the mouth. And then you thought, oh my God. How much suppression is going on here? How much are people keeping the lid on and how are they ever going to get rid of it?"
But is anyone listening? As the British government grapples with ever more intricate and elaborate ways to find a political way forward, will it have time amid its deliberations to hear what community groups, like CALMS, are saying?